2
Her bright Star of David gently hung
on the gold chain radiant,
as she stepped out of the steaming bath,
her wet fragrant hair glinting tiny droplets
as magnificent as a shower of shooting stars.
3
It used to be more beautiful
than the color of fresh lambs’ wool
in late February in the translucent green fields
of our valley, but now
your skin has yellow spots and blue veins.
ISLANDS VISITED
Islands I’ve visited
anchored and green on slippery seas;
of great clam beds commercially plundered,
of swaying forests of kelp
the beaches where tidal pools
temporarily isolated, mysteriously reflect the people of the moon.
In the rain scrubbed season,
the red budding limbs, three cranes assail the star studded sky;
in the thin light glint green tremulous leaves,
above alluvial beds open to the star studded sky.
Here down tired streets peopled by silent,
shabby individuals who live in loneliness,
the Earth, weary with work
and bloody baptisms,
is forged into a prison.
Children I will not caste myself
at the feet of the mighty,
as they aspire to tread me into oblivion,
for your sake; rather,
make my ravaged heart strong.
Repeatedly beaten by base men,
I sit convalescing in dawn’s early light,
open handed beneath trees by the river:
there, for fecund God, rising from the crowns of my sons heads
fly a flock of white doves.
HARRY THE HANDYMAN
Come girls, bring yer problems
pipes need unplugging,
broken window needs replacing,
even appliances can be repaired..
I’m Harry the handyman.
I’ll fix everything good as new
rewire that fried circuit,
paint your apartment
bone white with blood red trim.
Come girls, bring your frozen faces
worn with worry and creased cause o care.
I can cover time’s blemishes
better than cosmetics -
for only a very reasonable fee.
No humps to big,
or toothless hags to grotesquely fat
that Harry the handyman can’t fake
character for beauty.
Whatever scars
the years have ravaged
Harry will hide from watery eyes
and patch up, good as new,
ready for more abuse.
The bruises that blemish
poor battered hearts
Harry will heal.
And on some lucky day,
if his assignments should
happen to include
some sweet young thing
whose fine skin and lovely features
are not yet scarred
let Harry go ballistic
from their searing white heat
before his ordered betrayal is complete.
ITSWOOT STOOD STARING
On the clear cut Itswoot stood staring
at the chess board development stretching out over the valley floor.
And, yet perhaps Itswoot would see buried
the city with its glittering gilded steeples
in some future millennium, Portland.
This devouring cancerous growth, like a fungus makes the host tree,
it will twist and crumble the concrete skeleton
and with oblivious incisors completely gestate
her old steel sinews.
Vistas will teem with tourists
who have traveled from every place on Earth
to view sad relics and reflect and dream,
and again watch specials about the ancient ruins.
Thus their opinions will be created
about the gilded statues teetering on top of white spires
just as in ages past, powerful and corrupt
a hologram rising before them
like a ghostly apparitions of the dead.
THE HIGHEST WISDOM
The highest wisdom, it has been said, is the knowledge of God;
however, religion, when applied by virtue of reason,
is supposed to provide solace from every human affliction;
and, elevate the grief stricken and distraught
to the heights of Heaven, where some believe angels live
beyond the reach of suffering and sorrow.
Aware of man’s misery,
you can transcend life’s relative insignificance.
Happiness and hurt are two sides of the same coin;
which, can buy you, people have believed,
passage to a land of perfect equanimity,
a place beyond the censor of human emotions,
tranquil and eternal, and free from the fear of Death.
For the Golden Age was when all shared
equally in the bounties of Nature
iron had yet to be discovered
and its fields of bloody carnage
still lay slumbering dead ahead.
No private property, no material wealth
people hadn’t learned what it meant to be poor;
or, to feel small; you see to the roots of truth
the impoverished souls dwelling bellow the opulent ceiling.
But, when poor people listen to your sentient voice,
you don’t begrudge them their various pleasures.
Imagine living life struggling to endure.
And, for what? To be subjected
to the bigoted delusions of another!
Conventional wisdom are so many illusions,
Margaritte castles floating in the air:
darling little one you and they vanish into thin air;
and, I fall crashing onto the broken rocks
disappearing down below.
ISOLATED IN THE RAIN
In sleek suburbia isolated in the rain
near a turgid river,
in affluent neighborhoods crowded with houses
dressed in gray conservative suits there are strange polished men.
Occasionally one comes out, there where roads intersect,
where silent lawns lie sleeping,
and he listens to the rabbit’s story,
an ancient story, being noised about by the wind.
Itswoot came through here once,
heading South staring straight ahead
it smells of snakes, of icy slime and Winter mists
down near the marshes at the morose rivers’ mouths.
There he goes, driving his shiny new cadillac,
coursing along the crowded road
with a long, ostentatiously loud gospel song,
unctuously sung, oh sly wicked song.
This road is - a cob web of light and darkness,
a con man ringing at the front door,
fraud, bloody fist fights
in road houses frightening as nightmares.
He comes - Heaven help us! -
to the arrogant White House.
He impresses the President
of the proud U.S.
with his wide smile, his clear eyes,
his sly confidences
and an expensive suit that covers
a gold chain and cross dangling from his neck.
Why didn’t the crosses drip blood
at Salt Lake and at Washington,
why didn’t they - Oh God -
become struck by lightening and fall?
Limousines drive quietly up
to guarded gates;
the city raises up on its hind legs,
like a trained carnival bear.
“Well go on, holy men with stylized hair
and toothpaste smiles, bury my corpse,
in the cemetery that’s visited by the North wind….
Who’ll defend the poor, the widows and orphans?”
In a rich, developed nation
there are lots of slick young men.
You can hear their sleek self-satisfied happiness
their cars roaring along roads, by your homes.
UNRESPONSIVE PUPILS
Beneath a fine mist that fell christening the early morn,
the city was busy burying its dreams;
as I stepped out and shrugged off the darkness,
an odd shadow determined to observe everything.
The rising gale of city sounds forming an integument
over dawn’s soft spoken voices.
The small closed windows
spying on the somnolent street
I place my hand on yours
and we’re a binary star
twin constellations burning brightly
playing old tunes from out of our past:
Just like the night when they died
subliminally bewildered by the crown prince of darkness
the record of their love
laying, like little leaves scattered on spreading red stains,
about the beds first the children and then -
so many excised silhouettes of today’s night
their new futures, now outgrowing our corpse lives
cuticles and hair, stamped passports
on their unblinking eye’s, unresponsive pupils.
AT 3:00 A.M.
Last night I woke at 3:00 A.M. and then again at 4:00 A. M.
and wandered to the bedroom window, where a white flowering tree
pale in the moonlight shown like an audible sigh.
The street lights receded down the street, in diminishing pools of light,
as the wind quietly whispered fragmentary pieces of sleepy sentences,
which departed drowning in the darkness, too.
In spite of living together so many years, I thought wistfully of you;
I miss you whenever your not here, and remember:
my hand groping for your dry smooth warmth.
Your patiently waiting image greeted me in the shivering darkness.
There our children are still young, and are great rewards for the tremendous
joy
of what our naked bodies are busy doing.
These unnatural times scar the night’s beauty.
During some future, I will reach out for you -
knock over the clock and time will stop.
You’ll be there, bathed in moonlight,
your beautiful luminous face floating in the night;
regretting the shadows that separate us, and severe our time together.
Shadows that negate the unattainable and leave lacunae omissions,
while erecting a blank wall between us,
in yawning reality that silent gapes beneath artificial light.
I turn from the window and confront the oppressive shadows,
the old World may constantly be, newly born and ever changing;
and yet, we may just be changing tyrants.
DIVINE MYSTERY
Today, I furtively watched
while she bustled about the kitchen.
Her hips waddle, and though she’s kept her figure,
she’s wider than before, because of love,
and, she bends perspiring above the stove the stove,
as she works preparing dinner.
Her thin waist that I’ve often caressed
is as round as the full moon,
we’ve lived together as one
for so many years. She’ll drink fresh juice,
which I’ll serve with my own hands;
and, smile happily hidden in the shadows,
while she grows heavy, like a ripe fruit,
with the awkward weight of love.
And, when baby is born
she’ll breast feed it,
an experience only they will share;
for even when we’ve filled bottles
for me to feed baby from,
when she’s at work;
still, its not the same,
as when my child’s lips
hungrily suckle her nurturing richness.
Such is the wonderful
divine mystery
that is motherhood.
I’LL HAVE LIVED
Tonight, I might die, but today I’ll have lived.
Gloom settles in an integument everywhere.
All will expire. The rain written windows vanish.
I will not be out in the great loneliness of a storm soaked hill
communing with a little wren.
Stretching out in every direction, I know, down dark silent streets,
are other similar mendicants from distant nations
extending their hands to the holy darkness.
behind blind windows sleep humanities dreaming multitudes.
The universality of that desire, is one thing I know.
And, all are as alone as you and I. In the rain everywhere
that pours, not just from the sky, but from the wet trembling hands
and feet of the trees
that cover overnight the roofs and walls, streets and sidewalks in
rivers and lakes.
It minutely settles on shoulders and faces, hair and hands
weighing down with sadness, will they ever reach towards each other
soliciting solace? Consoling one another in their mutual misery.
Tonight, the night lays its cold blanket of darkness
beautifully tapestried in trembling stars over the city.
Now sung by those oppressed with untouchable marks of free ideas
a psalm raised to God on High.
Before then the rain will continue in a deluge
and I outside in the darkness communing
with my friend the wren. All be finished for me.
The lightening bolt realizations will rise
into an empty gentle darkness.
RUMOR MILL
It has been said that to try and reason with people who have
rejected rational thought and its authority over man, and whose convictions
are contemptuous of humanity is equivalent to giving medicine to a corpse.
Enjoy their brutal callousness and frank indifference to rational reflection.
Theirs is the right of any animal. No man will desire their legacy,
where only a terrorist or a torturer can be their compatriot and vicious
beast their lord.
What memorial has their behavior made them worthy of? Such
extraordinary behavior certainly deserves recognition. The lessons the
radical right inflicted the nation with warrant conspicuous placement among
remarkable people. And, least we loose the opportunity to learn and
benefit, before dusty history devours them in the rapacious jaws of relentless
oblivion, and convey to the future generations, what manor of persons were
capable of such conduct and how it gradually transpired.
In a variety of ways, ours will be recognized as a singular age.
The inheritors of the symbol of mankind’s greatest hope: The Statue Of
Liberty. But, who, while correctly remembering Jesus and Judas, couldn’t
distinguish the difference between the two. And, so the light from
the Statue of Liberty’s torch fell on a blind people. However, fortunately
there are still those who retain the ability to ascertain the radical right’s
true character. The question becomes how best to communicate it,
in this age of manufactured consent and deniability; and, while holding
the truth sacred, make sure its accurately transmitted, without the self-serving
distortions of propaganda, to future ages.
The standard honors bestowed on the dead seem somehow inadequate
to accompany people like the radical right to that last great leveler of
humanity; for regardless of individual differences here on Earth, the grave
is the one perfect Democratic institution. And, while Death may hold
supreme authority over the dying, It holds no power over the Dead.
The instant one dies, Death loses a subject; and, like the foolish tyrannical
masters the radical right serves, in the end inflict injury merely to destroy
themselves.
Prerequisite to your memorial, we willingly recognize the appropriateness
to bestow some order upon you. Something relevant relating to the
long history the radical rights’ actions and role enfold. The order
of knight seems singularly appropriate. Symbolically sublime they’ve
jousted wind mills and been irrelevant and served tyrants from antiquity
until today. The wisdom of our fore fathers saw fit to suggest tar
and feathers as a more suitable embalming agent than the embalmage of the
Egyptians and other ancients; and, neither being rude nor disrespectful
enough to disagree with my elders we’ll leave the rotting to the rotten
and turn our attention to what the Rumor Mill contends the radical right
did.
In this political election year, when the radical right are gearing
up for the elections and increasing the rate of their acts of violence
both of passionate and deliberate types. It would be appropriate
if we could, in view of the “new” wave of old fashioned injustices, have
“here lieth”
incised on their deceased honor - would that were not all that was
deceased about them. The Rumor Mill suggests that the radical right
have hoped to camouflage, and thus avoid their responsibility by
virtue of the unprecedented scale of the crime wave. The hypocrisy
of their pretended concern, while manifesting a callused disregard for
the public’s safety is particularly revolting. The radical right’s
reputation suffers when witnessed acting in public like sick individuals
jeering their propaganda machine’s efforts at misrepresenting their tragic
handiwork, arrogant to moral reproach and indifferent to legal retribution.
The Rumor Mill thinks that the radical right’s responsibility
is now determined and known to a degree where we have nothing to hope from
their corruption and everything to fear from their proven incompetancies.
Two primary components of the radical right’s corrupt character are inability
and indolence, which result in the vice and crime they play such a prevalent
parts in. The initial moderation manifested by the radical right
were not the result of any judgment, but rather the initial timidity of
a bully; and, initially, at least until a large enough number of citizens
were corrupted, by warping their moral beliefs by base (usually money)
personal advantage, and/or extorted; meanwhile, tyranny bid its time and
hid its true character, while the radical right made itself seem useful.
One area they were particularly eager to be helpful in was in catching
criminals. Unfortunately, the radical right were said to have created
many of the crimes they helped solve. One of the standard ploys
of the radical right is to create a crises, like the crack epidemic, and
then benefit from it by initiating in the media a reactionary response
, which the radical right then uses to extend their power base. The
acknowledged compliment vice pays to virtue is hypocrisy, was a fact not
lost on the radical right who coupled the observation with the realization
that vice couldn’t travel very far without the appearance of virtue chaperoning
it. All the radical right’s political gains were then and still are
cashed in on exploitive economic policies that further their economic interests.
The radical right found it expedient to develop the social skills
of its field operatives and to have them adopt the part of concerned parents.
If, reason repudiates attacking
societies’ Civil Rights, then put on a false facade of “superior” parental
authority. It serves at least two functions. First, it emotionalizes
an issue, which confuses the issue and impairs the participants from thinking
rationally. Second, it tends to win respect by championing “parenthood”
(who can oppose “parenthood”) which wins the moral “high ground”.
Once the radical right has occupied the moral “high ground” of “parenthood”
they proceed to stubbornly clamor for order and safety, which is done during
most occasions with a mien of false civility that is deceitfully designed
to foster a sense of false sincerity; while, in fact, the radical right
duplicitously engages in every perverse, sadistic and abusive behavior
violent acts against citizens can generate. The tragedy of
deceit sinks to nadir depths of depravity when the radical right simultaneously
recruits, trains and employs children to be hired victims to contrived
crimes, which the radical right hypocritically create.
Rumor Mill thinks that the Radical Right started out to save
America from itself. Instead of which, they subsequently became the
author of low and vulgar frauds, acts of terrorism and surreptitious supporters
of black acts of perverse vices far worse than the honest behaviors they
set out to suppress.
Humanity has never been able to universally determine what constitutes
right and wrong; but, there are certain behaviors which the consent of
countries and all people have determined as being tyrannical. In
this list of human vices, we soon discover that virtues have to be employed,
too. But, tyranny ultimately will tolerate no alliances, for it will
not willingly share power for long and virtues are soon attacked with no
apologies, for it recognizes no dissent. Tyranny is created in the
foul remains of all other vices, and is of such a hateful nature that it
conquers and embraces all other vice and corruption: such is the nature
of its victory!
Rumor Mill contends that the radical right’s current efforts
at subliminally induced crimes i.e. perverting senior citizens to sexually
abuse young children; or, whole families who are murdered by subliminally
deranged parents who then commit suicide; or, viciously attacking and killing
a young woman by a subliminally (remember how subliminal technologies was
first tried out and developed on animals) crazed huge dog, to get its owners
out of the way for the next local election; or, inducing a young woman
into murdering her Grandmother and then trying to commit suicide, instead
of returning to the streets where she had originally run away to in the
first place years ago: is conduct so basely mean in a public way that it
is without precedence and justification. In the first example it
is an attack against truth and integrity by corruption, which used a young
child’s body for its battleground. The ref. who wouldn’t help throw
a sporting event was paid back for his integrity and standing up to fraud,
by being perverted. In the second example not one but a whole series
of whole families were murdered by one subliminally disturbed parent, who
would follow the tragedies with their own suicide/murder. The institution
of family was attacked, in the radical right’s effort to destroy dissent;
also, the radical right wanted headlines and a pretense to murder their
victim, in a way which would help their law and order candidates in the
up coming fall elections. In the third instance it was an attack
against Democracy. The owners’ “sin” was that they were responsible
citizens, who effectively participated in Democracy at the local level
of government; however, they dissented from the opinion of the radical
right, and being successful and responsible citizens with a stable marriage
the radical right had no other way to conveniently get rid of them.
The young woman viciously mangled in a brutal attack by a crazed beast
was picked because the radical right didn’t approve of the way she thought.
In the last instance a young woman was picked because the radical right
needed to keep their numbers up, and thought that a young woman would be
useful because their previous murder victim was a young woman and
it was felt that a young woman committing an atrocious crime would make
their murder not seem as heinous, while it served to distract the public
from the severity of the attack against democratic forms of government.
The Rumor Mill contends that the radical right are responsible
in all cases and are completely wrong. If true, such behavior will
result in every good and decent citizen in the World, whether enemies or
allies uniting and despising the radical right. It constitutes an
act of war against Democracy and society, which nothing can excuse and
mitigate. Further, it represents an advancement of brutal and perverse
villainy and demonstrates an inherent wretchedness of soul comprised by
combining venomous malignancy with spiteful stupidity.
The laws of any civilized society would condemn the radical right
to imprisonment without exception, because they are a series of acts
attacking civilization; and, should God grant that the radical right become
accountable for its actions, may we prove to be more rational and more
merciful than the actions of the radical right deserve.
It is extremely unwise to develop technologies which can only
be used to violate fundamental human rights; and, abuse power in ways which
destroy society Civil Rights and Democratic Institutions. Ultimately,
such abuses of power will result in the enslavement of society and the
destruction of its wielders. Welcome to the memorial of the radical
right, commensurated on APRIL 1, a most appropriate day.